Damaged

by Amy Reed

  “That light,” Hunter says. I follow his finger to a space in the corner of the painting, where the darkness opens up into bright whiteness. “See how they’re all pointing toward it? See how it reflects off of everything, just barely?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I see it.”

  We walk slowly through the exhibit, Hunter taking his time with each painting. I look at them with him, but I obviously feel done way before he does. I’m not sure what else there is to look at; I don’t know what else he sees. His eyes are open in a way mine aren’t.

  We come to a painting that is especially gruesome. It seems vaguely familiar; I guess it must be famous enough for even me to recognize it. It is obviously the prized piece of the exhibit, huge and central, with a wall all to itself. Hunter and I join the crowd around it.

  I don’t know anything about art. I don’t know what style or movement this guy is. I couldn’t tell you anything about his technique or symbolism or influences. All I know is when I look at this painting—so huge it is the only thing I see—it feels like I am falling into it, getting sucked into its darkness, until all there is is darkness, until I am lost in it and can’t get out. I realize I am not breathing. My heart is racing. Did art do this to me? Is it really that powerful?

  I turn to Hunter, excited to tell him that maybe I’m starting to understand this thing he loves so much. But when I look at his face I see tears in his eyes. His lips are trembling.

  “Hunter,” I whisper. “What’s wrong?”

  He shakes his head. “Nothing.” He smiles, but it’s a small, private smile, as if he’s sharing an inside joke with himself. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? Feelings are good, even when they’re uncomfortable. They’re not things to run away from.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He doesn’t answer and he doesn’t look at me. He just says, “What did you feel while looking at this painting?”

  I try to think back to a few moments ago. “Fear,” I say. “I felt afraid.”

  “Perfect,” he says.

  “What’s perfect about being scared?”

  “It proves you’re human. It proves you’re alive. All this darkness—in a lot of ways it’s ugly, right? But it’s beautiful at the same time. It’s beautiful because it shows what we’re ­capable of surviving. It shows how deep we can feel. It’s so easy to forget that. We live in this world that’s so full of artificial crap, with so many tricks to make things easier, so we don’t have to go to those deep places anymore, we don’t have to experience this darkness. And people think that’s a good thing. But that’s what makes us whole, you know? The darkness with the light.”

  “Are you scared?” I say as softly as I can.

  “Of course I am.” He laughs sadly, as if the effort deflates him. He turns to me just barely, the corner of his eye all that’s capable of making contact. “Why do you think I drink so much?”

  “Do you think I’m scared?”

  He turns to me, looks me fully in the face, and smiles kindly. “You’re one of the most scared people I’ve ever met.”

  A tiny voice says to fight, to defend myself, to argue his statement away. But a louder voice says he is right; it says I don’t care if he sees it. I am scared. I’m terrified. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe I am brave enough to feel it, brave enough to go to that dark place, to just be with my fear. Maybe that’s the secret to surviving. Maybe facing it is all I really have to do to tame it.

  I break off our eye contact. I am full of a different kind of fear now, one that has to do with Hunter, a fear that is unfamiliar, that energizes, that is also a little blissful. Maybe I’m a coward to want to run from it, but I need a break from all this feeling. Just for a second.

  “I have to pee,” I say, and Hunter laughs, breaking the spell. Suddenly there’s a crowd around us. We’re not the only people in the world. We’re surrounded by stark white walls covered by these giant squares of sadness, but I’m the happiest I can remember feeling in a long time.

  As I’m finishing up in the bathroom, I realize I’m humming. I am not the kind of person who hums. I don’t think I’ve ever hummed in my life. But something about being here, being with Hunter, is making me feel unlike my normal self.

  I think about San Francisco. What if I adjusted my plans a little? Maybe I don’t need to start school right away. Maybe I can take some time off and see what it feels like to not be a student for a while. Maybe Hunter and I can even be friends. Maybe there’s a group of weirdos in San Francisco that has room for both of us.

  “You better watch out.”

  A high-pitched scream escapes my mouth. I open the stall door and look around. No one. I look in the mirror and there is just me. I run down the row of stalls punching the doors open. Nobody. Nothing. I am alone.

  “I’ll admit it—he’s pretty good at making a girl feel special,” says the voice.

  “Camille?” I can’t tell where the voice is coming from. It could be in the air vents. The faucets. The hand driers. It could be coming from inside my own head.

  “Those eyes of his. The way they look at you and seem to see your soul. The way they convince you that you see his. It’s a neat trick, isn’t it? But they’re just eyes, Kinsey. Just body parts.”

  “Where are you?”

  “It’s not real, you know. I hate to say this, because you seem so happy for once, but really you could be anyone right now and he’d be acting the same. He just wants to get laid and you just happen to be here.”

  How can something said by someone who doesn’t even exist hurt so bad? What the hell is going on?

  “Why are you telling me this?” I say. “Why are you following me?”

  Why am I talking to her as if she’s real?

  “Because I care about you,” she says. “Because I’m trying to help.”

  “You think insulting me is going to help me?”

  “I’m trying to protect you.”

  “Or maybe you’re jealous.”

  I’m fighting with my imagination. I’m trying to hurt a ghost’s feelings.

  She laughs, and the sound tears through me. I know it’s not her—that mean, spiteful sound could never have come from the real Camille—but it hurts as if it is, as if I’m being mocked by the person I’ve loved more than anyone.

  “Jealous?” she says. “Oh, Kinsey, don’t flatter yourself.”

  Camille would never say something like that.

  “I’m trying to help you.”

  “How is freaking me out in nightmares and sneaking up on me in bathrooms supposed to help me?”

  “I have to get your attention somehow, don’t I? I have to make you listen. Why aren’t you listening to me?”

  I’m talking to air. I’m talking to my own reflection in the mirror. There’s nowhere to look but into my own wide eyes.

  “I’m listening, Camille. What do you want to tell me?”

  But the door to the restroom opens and a loud group of women enters, their grating voices taking over the space. I wash my hands, trying to look as normal as possible, doing everything I can to avoid looking up and catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

  When I step back into the exhibit, the previous magic of the space is gone. The paintings are just paintings, giant canvasses covered with haphazard blobs of paint that mean nothing. They are being stared at by pretentious people who are just pretending to understand what they’re looking at, but really they’re all terrified that someone will see through their act and discover what a fraud they are. That’s all any of us really do—try to convince everyone we have our shit together, when really we’re stupid or weak or insecure or, in my case, lonely and crazy and haunted by ghosts.

  I can’t find Hunter. I walk around the exhibit but he’s gone. Panic seizes me from the inside; all my muscles and organs wrench tight. Maybe he’s left me here. Maybe he’s final
ly gotten sick of me. Maybe he’s gone the way of so many other people in my life—my father, Camille, my mom in her various ways—and just disappeared forever.

  No. He would not do that. I’m letting the crazy voice win. I cannot listen. I cannot believe her.

  I enter the bright bustle of the museum lobby. Sunlight streams through the wall of windows. People stand in line for tickets. People stand in line for bag check. And there, in the corner away from the crowds, is Hunter, still here.

  I’m relieved as I approach him. I want the magic of our last conversation back. I want him to replace my fear with ­happiness. But as I get closer, I realize that’s not what’s in store. He’s on the phone, his face red and contorted in anger.

  “Mom, what did he do?” I hear him say. I stand a few feet away, far enough to give the false impression of privacy. I know I shouldn’t be listening, but I can’t help myself.

  “Did he hurt you?” Hunter says. My heart drops. I take a few steps away, but not far enough.

  “Mom, please,” he pleads, his voice low and strong and steady. “Tell me the truth. You don’t have to protect him.”

  Silence as he listens.

  “I’ll come back, Mom. I’ll come back if you need me to.”

  Silence.

  “Do you promise? You’re not just trying to make me not worry?”

  He turns around and looks at me. I try to send him all the kindness I can through my eyes. I try to replace all the feelings I have from my run-in with Camille with concern for him, for his mother, for this woman I never met and this boy I barely know. If I think about them, I don’t have to think about Camille. If I care about them enough, I don’t have to think about myself.

  “Okay,” Hunter says to the phone. “I love you, Mom.” My heart breaks a little. “I love you,” he says again, then turns the phone off and puts it in his pocket. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, like he’s trying to create stillness, silence, just for a second, like he’s trying to regain his bearings. When his eyes pop back open, he says decisively, “Let’s walk.”

  It seems somehow inappropriate that it’s such a beautiful day. The sky is blue and the temperature is perfect, flowers are blooming everywhere, and everyone we pass seems to be smiling more than they should. I stay quiet as we wander south through Grant Park; I figure Hunter should be the one who decides when we’re ready to talk again.

  After several minutes of walking, Hunter finally breaks the silence. “You know what’s crazy? My dad’s here somewhere, like right around here. My mom says he left Wellspring yesterday. His office is close to here, in one of these high-rises. And his new condo is somewhere downtown. I’ve never even seen it.”

  I don’t say anything. I just keep walking, matching my footsteps with his.

  “It’s weird to think he could be blocks away right now. We could run right into him by accident.”

  He stops walking. “Oh, this is Buckingham Fountain,” he says. We’re standing in front of a giant ornate fountain, surrounded by tourists taking identical photos in front of it. “It’s one of the largest fountains in the world.”

  “You don’t have to be tour guide right now,” I say.

  He smiles, turns around, and starts walking in the opposite direction. “Let’s go this way.”

  After a few moments, I say, “What would you do? If we ran into him?”

  Without a beat, Hunter says, “I’d kick his ass.” But then he sighs a sad laugh and says, “Or I’d probably run away as fast as I could.”

  We walk the entire length of Grant Park north into Millennium Park. It’s a place I’ve heard about my whole life, this great oasis in the big city, this triumph of green space in urban planning. Despite the expanses of grass and flowers and growing things, something about it strikes me as sad, the way everything is perfectly planned and manicured, the trees so evenly spaced, the bushes carved, the flowers bunched in measured arrangements. Something has been lost by taking out the wildness, something true. In taking out the variables, in making all this life a little more convenient, it’s lost some of its soul.

  This seems profound. It is something I’d like to talk about with Hunter, something I know he’d understand. But right now, I’m enjoying our silence. Maybe talking isn’t always the best form of communication. During our walk, we’ve managed so many light touches of the hand or bumping of shoulders, which neither of us acknowledges. I don’t know if these nearnesses are accidental. All I know is I like them. All I know is the closer I am to Hunter, the farther away I get from Camille, the farther away I am from the part of myself that needs her.

  We approach a giant globular silver structure that I immediately recognize as the famous Bean sculpture. We walk around it like all the other tourists, watching our reflections morph in and out of the curved mirrored surface. We walk under it, into the cavelike tunnel that opens up underneath. We stand in the middle, looking up at the bulbous ceiling. It’s hard to find ourselves among all the other distorted faces, but there we are, flipped upside down, our mouths stretched into grotesque grimaces, our eyes swirled like scrambled eggs, our noses and ears ripped apart and glued where they don’t belong, everything unrecognizable, everything deranged, everything made ugly and inhuman.

  “That’s the real me,” Hunter says softly, looking up at his distorted reflection. I lean into him, my shoulder pressed against his. I circle my fingers around his wrist, for a brief moment, then let go.

  We keep walking.

  After another gourmet meal by Eli, we stay up late talking, drinking tea, and playing board games. I want to get used to this new version of Hunter, this one content with spending the evening sober, this one who laughs and tells funny stories. We’re leaving tomorrow morning, and I want to take this Hunter with me.

  After a particularly exhausting laughing fit, Hunter says breathlessly, “I can’t remember ever having this much fun sober.”

  “Well, you haven’t given it much of a chance,” Eli says.

  “True,” says Hunter. There’s silence for a few moments in the wake of these statements, but it’s not entirely uncomfortable. I remember friendship like this, when you trust someone so much you can say or hear anything. The ache of missing Camille thuds dully in my chest.

  Discussion of tonight’s sleeping arrangements ends up a little awkward. This whole time, Shelby had assumed Hunter and I were a couple, so she’s excited to tell us about the full-size futon in the spare bedroom that she made up for us. I don’t know why sleeping next to each other on the bed seems so different from in the tent, but it does.

  “Oh, um,” I say.

  “Crap,” Eli says. “Shel, I guess I forgot to explain their relationship. Or lack thereof.”

  Hunter pretends to look out the window.

  “We’re not together,” I say. “We’re just, um, friends.”

  “Oh,” Shelby says, her face turning a bright shade of red. “I’m so sorry. I just assumed— You guys seemed so—”

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  “I’ll sleep on the couch,” Hunter says.

  “No, it’s okay. You can have the bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.” I don’t say anything about enjoying how we slept last night. I don’t say anything about being afraid to sleep alone.

  “No, you should have the bed,” Hunter says. “I want you to have the bed.”

  “No, really, it’s fine. I’m fine sleeping on the couch.”

  “Oh shit,” Shelby says. “Look what I started.”

  “You get the bed and that’s final,” says Hunter, and I sense an edge to his voice. “I’m being chivalrous.” He grins. “You being the weaker sex and all.”

  “Oh thanks,” I say. “You’re so kind.”

  Not the ground. Not a tent. Not a couch. Not even a bed.

  Sand, but more like dust.

  Sky, but more like wasted breath.

  Your he
ad on a cloud, a makeshift pillow. Your face, an eyelash away from mine. Your smile, a sickle that cuts through time and mourning.

  “I miss you,” you say.

  “I miss you, too.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  I feel the movement of your words on my skin, but there is no heat to your breath, no smell. Just the displacement of air.

  “I’m sorry about what I said earlier,” you say.

  “It’s okay.”

  There are two of me, one who wants to be with you and one who wants to stay here, solid, where light does not shine through me, where I make shadows instead of getting lost in them. The world of you has a hole inside where wind passes through. A hollow place. A wound that does not heal.

  We are in the place that does not heal. From white to black to red. The night cut open like a scar.

  “I knew I was dead,” you say. “I knew my body was on its own. I was somewhere else, above it all, watching the whole thing. I saw Hunter leave me there and save you.”

  My eyes are your memory. We watch the scene as you narrate: a dead girl and one almost, a brave boy who no one sees.

  “I saw him run through fire,” you say. “You were out. He thought no one saw him, but I did.”

  “I see him,” I say.

  White. This nothing world. This place of waiting.

  “You think you do. He looks up at you with those eyes of his and you think he’s showing you everything.”

  Black.

  “Aren’t you tired, Kinsey?”

  I am a cloud but I feel like mud, like tar, like quicksand, like some­thing that wants to be solid.

  “Just surrender, Kinsey. Just stop fighting. Aren’t you tired of fighting?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come with me.”

  “How?”

  “You know.”